


The Red Shoes

by angryschnauzer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cursed objects, F/M, No Smut in part 1, Re telling of Hans Christian Andersens Fairy Tale, The Red Shoes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 07:14:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10079117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angryschnauzer/pseuds/angryschnauzer
Summary: Whilst on a hunt with his Dad, Dean watches a young woman buy a pair of beautiful red shoes, later telling him that she’s going to be a dancer at a local bar. Thirteen years later and their paths cross again… and Dean realises that the girl has been having to live with a cursed pair of shoes for over a decade.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this is part 1 of my entry into @neversatisfiedgirl‘s ‘LoveSexMagic Challenge’ on Tumblr, where i chose to write a retelling of The Red Shoes, which like most original fairy tales its pretty gross and gory. Part one is backstory, part 2 (Work in progress) will be smut.  
> I’m behind on my Supernatural watching (i am halfway through season 9!) but am generally basing this in 2017, with a flashback to 2004 set after Sam had gone to college but before John disappeared/Season 1.

The Red Shoes

Thirteen Years Ago

Dean leant against the side of the Impala sipping the strong coffee from the thin paper take out cup, watching the girl through the window of the store they were parked outside of. He watched as the assistant reached into the window display and pulled the pair of slut red six inch stilettos from the display, showing them to the pretty customer who grinned and clapped her hands in glee.

“Darlin’ those aren’t shoes for ‘walkin” he muttered to himself.

Moments later he watched as the innocent looking young woman came out of the store, a huge smile on her pretty face as she was too engrossed looking into her shopping bag to see him as she walked past, sitting on the seat at the bus stop a few feet away. Downing the rest of his coffee he tossed the cup into the trash can and sat next to her;

“Hey”

Not a single response. She continued to stare into the bag, the box open as she gazed at her shoes. Dean cleared his throat;

“Hey... you ok?”

Finally she looked up;

“Oh Hi”

“Hi” he flashed her his thousand megawatt smile; “Nice shoes”

“Thanks. They’re for my new job”

“New job? You gonna be a stripper or something? You’re too pretty to do that darlin”

She smiled and looked down bashfully;

“Well I gotta earn some money to go to college; I can dance so I’m starting at Andersen’s Bar tonight”

She fished into her purse and pulled out a matchbook, handing it to Dean;

“Come by, I could do with seeing a friendly face” It was then that the cross town bus pulled up, the girl getting to her feet; “I’m Karen by the way”

Dean smiled up at her;

“Dean”

As the bus pulled away Dean watched it go until a familiar voice snapped him out of his trance;

“Dean! If you’re done we’ve got a nest of vamps to dust before sunset”

Dean climbed into the passenger side, tossing the matchbook onto the dash;

“Sure thing Dad”

~*~

Sam parked the Impala and glanced into the back seat where Dean had been snoring for the last hundred miles;

“We’re here”

“Where’s here?”

“Just get up; it’s where we’re meeting the witness in that Vampire lead”

Dean climbed out, his body ached and he could do with another 12 hours sleep. The last hunt had been brutal; his bruises had bruises and he could have sworn that one of his molars was loose from the sucker punch the Werewolf’s husband had thrown at him.

Standing in the gravel parking lot he looked up at the neon sign;

_Andersen’s  
We’ll Tell No Tales_

Dean fought back the uneasy feeling that gathered in the pit of his stomach, something was firing in his worn out mind, tiredness fogging the synapses as he tried to think what was so familiar about where he stood.

Before he knew it Sam had dragged him into the bar and they were sat at a small table, beers and burgers ordered as they waited for their witness to turn up. When the waitress finally returned with their order it was just as the lights went down and the music was turned up, all eyes turning to the stage. The first few bars of Prince’s ‘Cream’ came crackling out of the speakers and every jaw in the joint dropped; the dancer was stunning.

She twirled and span, her feet carrying her so gracefully across the stage that it was almost magical. She was exactly in time with the music, not a second too soon or too late at every step. She spun around the pole and flipped herself upside down, coming to a halt as the music finally stopped, her legs clinging to the metal as she hung there with her eyes closed. After a brief moment of silence the crowd burst into applause as the dancer climbed down, bowing to the crowd she kept her head low before disappearing off stage, the bar manager coming on with a microphone;

“A round of applause for Dorothy!”

As he went on to explain about private dances and how to book them, Sam nudged Dean in the ribs;

“Here’s our witness”

Reluctantly Dean turned his attention to the case in hand, soon very much regretting even agreeing to Sam’s half cocked theory and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that their ‘witness’ was in fact just someone who didn’t understand what it was like to work night shifts. Still Sam agreed to swing by the ‘nest’ just to check it out, just to keep the witness happy. After an hour of listening to Sam and the witness wax lyrical about subjects Dean had no interest in he got to his feet, walking away quietly with his companions not even noticing he’d left.

Handing a substantial amount of money over to the private dance booking desk the velvet rope was unclipped; he was ushered behind the well worn curtain into the dimly lit corridor. Going through the door he knew the drill, it wasn’t his first time doing this. It was however the first time he wasn’t going in for his own pleasure and as he sat down and the music started he assumed the position; Captain Kirk in the pilot’s seat, arms on the sides, knees apart.

He watched intently as Dorothy entered the room, the music more sultry and low than it had been in the main bar. He saw that where her body told him one thing her eyes told him another and as she gyrated her hips closer to his lap he wasn’t watching her tits or her ass, instead his gaze was firmly trained on trying to see if he could get her to break her trance.

As she turned to sit on his lap he could feel his body responding to the feel of her curves against his crotch, yet he ignored the urges, his lips close to her ear as he watched her slide her hands up her body;

“How do I know you?”

She only let out a little laugh, ignoring his question until he spoke again;

“You need my help... something’s not right here...”

At that point he broke the cardinal rule of a lap dance; he moved his hands and held her still on his lap;

“Stop... I want to talk...”

She froze;

“I can’t”

“Talk?”

She bolted upright, continuing to dance to the track;

“No... Stop”

Finally the song ended and his time was up, Dean watched as she left the room in a hurry, not waiting for a tip.

When Dean returned to find Sam he was relieved that the witness had gone, Sam paying the tab and telling him they needed to get to the motel before they checked out the vamp nest just to make sure the next day.

~*~

As Sam apologised profusely to the homeowner of the ‘nest’ Dean was rummaging through the depths of the glove compartment before he finally found what he had been looking for;

“Got it!”

He held up the faded pink matchbook triumphantly as Sam returned to the car;

“Got what?”

“Proof that something is going on at Andersen’s”

“Where?”

“The strip club you took me to last night. We’re going back, somethin’s up”

Sam just raised his eyebrow at Dean’s words, prompting the elder brother to grunt and motion for him to get into the car, Dean peeling away from the kerb with a squeal of tyres;

“Hey, what’s the hurry?”

“Thirteen years Sam... I could have saved that girl THIRTEEN YEARS ago”

“Okay, back up; what’s going on?”

“I was here thirteen years ago hunting vamps with Dad, that first semester you went to Stanford. It was probably one of the last cases we hunted together”

“So how does this tie to the club? Or this?” he held up the matchbook

“When we were in town I saw this girl – Karen – buy a pair of stunning hooker heels from a store in town, she was literally hypnotised by them. She said she was going to dance at a local club to save money for college” he looked down and cursed; “Damn, I could have saved her then”

“Saved her from what?”

“The shoes”

“She’s got cursed shoes? You know how ridiculous that sounds?”

Dean side eyed Sam;

“Err Portland? The Leviathan’s? The cursed ballet shoes? ‘Bout 6 years ago?”

Sam gritted his jaw, immediately remembering the case where a town had been hit by a spate of cursed objects, one of which had been a pair of silk ballet shoes that someone had danced themselves to death in;

“Ok, I’m in”

~*~

They flashed their fake ID’s to the janitor who had opened the door of the club to them, pointing them towards the manager’s office.

“So, what can you tell us about Karen?”

The moment Dean had used her real name rather than Stage name the manager had trusted them, explaining that she’d worked every day for years now, too many to count.

“Every day?”

“Yup. She even set the alarms off a couple of Christmas’s ago. I came down here to find her dancing on stage. Said she wanted to practice. Since then I’ve given her a key and tried to make her deputy manager, she keeps turning the promotion down, says she’s saving for...”

“College” Dean finished for him before clearing his throat; “You mind if we go talk to her?”

“Sure, hope she’s not in trouble?”

“No, no, we think she’s... we think something, one, someone is stalking girls like her in the area”

Dean stumbled over his words as the manager pulled Karen’s file, labelled ‘Dorothy’ with a picture of the Wizard of Oz and her bright red shoes on the front, scribbling down her address;

“You tell her she doesn’t need to come in if she doesn’t feel safe, ok?”

“Sure thing”

~*~

Dean rang the bell again; the screen door resting against him as he got frustrated that there was no answer;

“I’m goin’ round back”

“No, wait”

“For what?”

He turned to where Sam was looking and let out a nervous breath, Karen was walking towards them holding a bag of groceries as she looked at them;

“Can I help you?”

They watched as she came up the steps, her gait not faltering as she took them two at a time in the same red heels she’d been wearing at the club. Dean blushed a little, looking flustered as he tried to find the right words;

“Miss... Karen. Sorry. Look, is there somewhere we can talk?”

She looked at him nervously before stepping around him to her front door;

“I don’t know what you want but I am not that kind of dancer, and I don’t know how you found out where I live...”

“We’re here to help you” Dean blurted out

“Help me?”

Sam let out a loud sigh;

“With your cursed shoes”

They all looked down at her feet before she finally spoke;

“Oh. You better come in then”

~*~

The two brothers sat on the couch as Karen moved around the small living space of her house, intently watching as she moved so gracefully in her ever present red shoes. Setting mugs of coffee down in front of them she took a seat, her feet nervously shifting on the rug as Dean spoke;

“Tell us what happened”

“I remember you now... you talked to me at the bus stop right after I bought these”

Dean nodded, unable to speak as he choked back the lump in his throat, letting her continue;

“The first time I danced at the club I thought they were going to laugh me out of the place, tell me to go home, that I was an amateur. But they didn’t. They said I was a natural and made me the top billed dancer there and then. I danced for eight hours straight that night, made over a thousand bucks in tips. I remember coming home and showering before falling into bed to sleep. When I woke up the shoes were back on my feet. I couldn’t remember when I’d put them on but just pushed it to the back of my mind, eager to get back to the club to dance again and make more money for college. Each day started like that and ended like that. At the end of the year I was called into the office and told that I had vacation days owing so I took a day off. I danced at home. I danced at Wal-Mart. When time came for college I left the shoes here when I went off, only to find them waiting for me in my dorm room. They wanted me to dance and not sit in study hall... that was when I knew what they were”

Karen’s voice faltered slightly as she clung to her coffee mug;

“I tried to burn them, throw them in the river. I’ve got a friend that works at the smelting plant on the outskirts of town. Each time I would get rid of them they’d be waiting for me when I got back home. So... can you help me?”

Both men swallowed nervously; they’d never encountered someone so calmly accepting that their life was ruled by a demonic object. Sam was first to speak;

“You can still take the shoes off?”

Karen nodded, slipping her feet out of the still bright red heels, setting them down onto the floor beside her. He stood and walked over to them, picking them up and inspecting them closely, finally seeing something that piqued his interest inside;

“Dean, come look at this”

As Dean looked into the shoe he realised what was going on;

“It’s a very old German curse; it’s in an old dialect that we’ve only seen a few times before...”

He was unable to continue as suddenly the shoe he was holding was pulled downwards by an invisible force, and he was suddenly on his knees slipping the shoe onto Karen’s foot as if he was Prince Charming to her Cinderella. Looking up he saw her lip tremble as the other shoe moved by itself and worked its way onto her other foot until she was sitting primly with her feet together neatly.

“We can sort this out pretty quickly, can’t we Sammy?”

“Yeah, there’s a few things in the car where we can get started, one of us will need to go to the lockup in Portland and get one of the curse boxes.... I can do that if you wanted to get started on the other stuff?”

Dean nodded, feeling desperate to help Karen out of her situation, one that if he had paid attention to in the first place she would never have been in.

 

 

 


End file.
